It started with a family who couldn't throw anything away.
And the Wimmera is a good deal richer for it.
Woods' Heritage Museum began the way the best collections do: slowly, and at home. Brothers John and Michael Woods started it in the 1980s on the family farm at Rupanyup South, and they had a head start. Their parents and grandparents had been collectors too, so there was already a good deal worth keeping.
They filled every shed on the farm. So in 2001 they bought the present site on the Wimmera Highway and put up a big shed to hold it all. They soon outgrew that one, so they built another. Then another. And so it went. The museum officially opened in 2007, and it has not really stopped growing since.
What makes it worth the drive is the decision they made about how to show it. Rather than line the machinery up in rows, the family recreated a whole streetscape, with a grocery, a butcher, a Post Office, a saddlery, a book shop and more. They built two family homes and furnished them down to the crockery. The clothing, the household pieces and the everyday things were finally given room to be seen rather than stored.
Forty years, one shed at a time
The museum is always a work in progress. These are the years that shaped it.
It started with
one donation.
In 2015 Bev Langley donated her large collection of clothing, and that was the beginning of the room most visitors now talk about on the way out. The years since have brought local wedding dresses, ball gowns, pioneer clothing, christening gowns, deb dresses and all the small things that come with them.
Today the majority of what is in that room came from people nearby. The Deutsher family in particular donated Clarice Deutsher's collection of ball gowns and accessories, and the quality glass cases to display them properly.
It is a local collection in the truest sense. Most pieces were worn by someone from around here, on a day that mattered to them.
Her name is on
the research room.
In 2016 the family home was moved from Rupanyup South onto this site so that John and Michael's sister, Alison Woods Stephen, could live here again after many years in Melbourne. She passed away in 2020.
Memories of Alison are all through the museum, particularly in Alison's Research Room and in the Woods family glass display case. If you are looking for a place to start, start there.
“As the Woods family have no descendants, the museum has been entrusted to the Rupanyup community in the future.”
Which is another way of saying it belongs to everyone who walks through it. About thirty volunteers open the doors every day, keep the displays clean and put on the light lunches for groups. If you have ever thought a place like this runs itself, it does not.
The museum by the numbers
Counted by the people who collected it all.
- Began
- 1980sOn the farm at Rupanyup South
- Opened
- 2007On the Wimmera Highway
- Tractors
- 92Oldest a 1918 Fordson
- Stationary engines
- 100
- Collectable tins
- 2,500Give or take
- Tonka toys
- 850Noel Funcke's collection
- Folklore pottery
- 105The Betty Trotman collection
- Volunteers
- About 30Open the doors every day
The story is better in person.
Open 7 days, 9am to 4pm. Ask a volunteer about any of this while you are here. They will know.